'Grand Theft Auto' drove filmmaker to experiment

Andy Warhol might be the headliner at the Wexner Center for the Arts, but Phil Solomon will soon be getting his 15 minutes -- and then some.

Andy Warhol may be the headliner at the Wexner Center for the Arts, but Phil Solomon will be getting his own 15 minutes next month - and then some.

The celebrated avant-garde filmmaker will be on the Ohio State University campus Wednesday as part of the center's visiting filmmaker series. His works will also be presented on Oct. 9 ("Collaborations with Stan Brakhage and Other Films") and Oct. 16 ("Twilight Psalms and Other Films").

The centerpiece of Wednesday's 90-minute program: a trilogy of digital videos made from the popular Grand Theft Auto video-game series.

Using video games as "found footage" is common - the technique makes up the bulk of the genre known as "machinima" - but Solomon's works are not.

While most machinima leans toward parody, Solomon uses characters and settings from San Andreas and Vice City to create hushed, dreamlike videos that stand in stark contrast to the action-packed and controversial games.

Solomon, a film professor at the University of Colorado, spoke by phone last week from his home in Boulder about the use of video games as an artistic medium and the appeal of experimental cinema.

Q: What inspired you to use a video game in your work?

A: I had not seen a video game, literally, since Pong in the 1970s. I taught a class in post modernism and it gave me an excuse to go to Best Buy. I wanted to ask young people what's happening instead of telling them what has happened in the past. I wanted to find out what the hell is going on. So I walk into Best Buy and the kid tells me about Grand Theft Auto. He said it was free-roaming game - that you don't have to go on missions and all that - and that it was realistic in terms of its setting.

Of course I was horrified when I got it home (laughs). But I was also intrigued. The violence, you know, it's good for a couple of faculty meetings but then it wears off. I never would have guessed how immersive just a thumb controller and a little dual shock vibrator could actually be. I finally understood the compulsion people have toward interactivity.

Q: The first GTA piece - Untitled (for David Gatten) - was made with (filmmaker) Mark LaPore. Did you two actually sit down and play the game?

A: We wouldn't really play it. Mark would just tell me what to do and we would just make goofy things happen. Games have these things they call "cheats." Grand Theft Auto, in particular, had very silly cheats. Very surreal. And they're really useless. They're not meant for any narrative purpose - they're just goofy. So we would combine a few codes and make really beautifully surreal landscapes happen Out of all this recording of game play, Mark took four shots and we put it together. And then I worked on the sound after he left and added some things that he requested and that I wanted. So I wanted the sound of a train in the background and he wanted snakes.

Q: Were you surprised by the reaction of audiences?

A: We made it for our friend David Gatten. All three of us had been ill and had survived, so it kind of was a get well card for all three of us. We made it as a private kind of amusement. It turns out that Mark died three weeks later and it now became, obviously for me, something he left me. It had import that I didn't think it otherwise would have. They showed it at the New York Film Festival that fall and it went on to win first prize at the Onion City Experimental Film Festival (in Chicago), which was just so charming to me that this little five-minute piece would stand out. It was quite powerful for people, as simple as it is.

Q: The GTA games are violent and parodical while your works are quiet and contemplative. Is the disparity intentional?

A: My artistic disposition is one of melancholy. Even though I'm an outgoing person, my artistic imagination tends to go toward the dark and, especially as I got older, toward the quiet and the slow. As everybody else is ramping up, I'm ramping down (laughs). So it wasn't a political decision to say "This is a game of action, I'm going to do the opposite." It just turned out that way. But I like that I'm turning the game on itself and doing something it wasn't really designed to do.

Q: Were the GTA pieces a difficult "sell" in the avant-garde community?

A: People were surprised just in terms of me working in video games, not specifically Grand Theft Auto. My friends don't have any moral issues with the game. They're not Tipper Gore characters (laughs). It was just in terms of me, who makes these very serious, textured films, doing something so radical in the digital format. Many people in my field are turning to digital out of necessity but they approach it with a kind of filmmaker's sensibility. And I did a 180 and made a supremely "digital digital." It was quite challenging and it was also a lot of fun. I can do crane shots, you know? I don't have to have guys in Hard Rock Caf shirts and walkie talkies and baseball caps pretending like they know what they're doing. I can do it all myself - which is the reason I do this kind of filmmaking in the first place, because I can do it myself.

Q: Can you talk about the differences between working in digital and film?

A: Twilight Psalm II: Walking Distance was shot on film and edited on film. It's completely film. I made it when I was 10 years younger than I am now and it required a lot of physical effort besides the fact that all the tools were still available like splicing tape and all those things, which are now harder to come by. Twilight Psalm III: Night of the Meek (showing Oct. 16) was the first piece that I edited on digital even though it was captured on film. I edited it digitally because I had so much material that I couldn't manage it. It was such a fantastic pleasure to edit on digital that I'll never go back. But capturing on film is still much more interesting and beautiful. I would say, for me, film is tactile. You get a sense of touch from it.

Q: The digital videos you've made look very different from your films, but do they share the same feeling - the same emotional themes?

A: Yes. People who've seen the video work say it's definitely one of my pieces even though it's radically different. It's all just kind of amusing to me to because I make these things at home. I'm not an artist when I'm out in the world. I'm an artist here. What happens after this part of it is anybody's guess. Some people will get it and some people won't. The problem is we keep thinking of the movies in terms of accessibility. If you just think about poetry, painting and music, there's no problem. But there's this prejudice toward accessibility from the movies..

Q: You once compared the difference between avant-garde and commercial filmmaking to the difference between John Grisham or Stephen King and Emily Dickinson. Can you explain?

A: When you read a Grisham or a Stephen King, which I used to do like everybody else, there's a great pleasure in those kinds of things where you get lost and you're not aware of yourself anymore. For me, when I read a poem, I'm stuck. I see the words on the page. I'm conscious of my body, my breath, the syllables, the alliteration, the rhyme. Even as I'm getting image and metaphor and meaning and being moved, I'm still hyper aware of the plasticity of the medium.

I think avant-garde filmmaking forces you to pay attention. It makes you very vulnerable. So that's why you have to help audiences to relax. You have to unfold their arms.

When you're in the dark, what I call the signal-to-noise ratio is very high. It's all signal, very little noise. When you go to a gallery, it's a lot of voices, reflections off the glass, people talking. Cinema is much more spiritual. It's like church. It's a communion, but it's also an individual experience.

Filmmaker's work

Phil Solomon will present a sampling of his work starting at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Wexner Center for the Arts, 1871 N. High St.

The lineup: Untitled (for David Gatten) (2005), Rehearsals for Retirement (2007) and Last Days in a Lonely Place (2007) -- made with footage from the Grand Theft Auto video-game series; a preview of the unfinished work Still Raining, Still Dreaming, from Grand Theft Auto IV; and the 16 mm film Twilight Psalm II: Walking Distance (1999).

Tickets cost $7, or $5 for members, students and senior citizens.

Two Solomon-created installations are also on display in the Wexner performance space through Wednesday: EMPIRE, set within GTA IV; and a preview of American Falls, to be displayed next year at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington.

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